


Phantasmagoria

by Heiots



Series: Intricacies of Joan Watson [4]
Category: Elementary (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 09:19:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3972559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heiots/pseuds/Heiots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan deals with the loss of Andrew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phantasmagoria

**Author's Note:**

> Dug out abandoned fic, and since it's highly unlikely it'll be worked on again, here it is.  
> All bad things are mine. All good things belong to amindamazed.

The wind barrels around the corner, nipping at Watson's nose in its passing. She welcomes the frosty caress, not bothering to sweep the wayward strands of raven hair from her face. 

Shuffling feet interrupt her solitude. A stranger emerges from the door she’d escaped through earlier and pauses a few feet from her to take a puff. He catches her gaze, and after a moment, holds out his pack of cigarettes.

An unexpected visitor with an unexpected gift.

_Mom told me not to accept candy from strangers._

Poison-laced candy, in particular.

It is a grim joke, but mirthless humour is all she can stomach these days. She plucks a stick from the stranger’s box of offerings, rolling it between thumb and fingers as he digs out a Zippo-style lighter from the pocket of his jeans.

The last time she allowed herself a cigarette was the night before her valedictorian speech. She had stopped before it became an addiction. Chain-smoking ravages the lungs, but one little cancer stick can hardly be regarded as tempting fate. Besides, fate makes its own rules and plays by its own rules.

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die.

He does her the honours, hand cupped to shield the flame from the wind.

“Suffocating in there.”

She barely acknowledges his words with a nod. Her entry into the chilly night has nothing to do with the jostling crowd and everything to do with the music of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It was Andrew’s go-to band when he was upset, and their signature sound caught her off guard. Since she hadn’t penned in a breakdown in her schedule, much less one in public, the burning sensation behind her eyes was her cue to get out.

She leans against the wall and inhales slowly, revelling in the bitterness on her tongue.

Hitting the bar was a bad decision anyway. She is King Midas, and her gift is a curse in disguise.

The stranger does not make further attempts at conversation, which is just as well. She is in no mood for small talk. They linger in the cold, puffs of smoke exhaled into the endless night, where stars sparsely dot the narrow strip of dark sky.

Space fireflies, Andrew used to joke, a term he’d coined as a five-year-old boy who imagined himself an astronaut whose duty was to collect twinkling lights in jars.

She drops the glowing cigarette to the cracked concrete and puts it out with the tip of a heeled boot. Dying embers leave black marks of scattered ashes on the ground.

The wind tails her home, whispering memories with every step. Her fingers twitch as cravings for a second cigarette arise. She has forgotten how it used to quell unsettling emotions.

Shadows dance across the walls of her less-than-immaculate apartment. They are fleeting apparitions, here one second, and gone the next. She knows because she’s been watching them, laid out on the couch after having shucked off her footwear. They remind her of Erebus, the primordial god she read about in literature classes, the supernatural being personifying darkness and shadows, the god whose name also represents the place where the dead pass in the underworld.

She drifts in and out of consciousness, shadows flitting from the apartment to an imaginary world. In the ferryman’s boat, she sails across River Styx before encountering the legendary Hades and Proserpina. She leads her lover back to the land of the living and turns midway, forgetting that a single look back condemns him to eternal loss. The light in his eyes is the last to go.

If Greek mythology were real, perhaps she would still stand a chance.

Glaring sunlight rouses her from sleep, back to where the heavy silence is a pool of emptiness to drown in. She sucks in shallow breaths, one after another, and imagines she brought him back safe and sound into the light. She imagines a thousand other scenarios, all of them involving different ways of rescuing him, yet none of them anywhere near her grasp. Shuddering, she curls into herself as the air fills with broken sounds of one painful gasp after another.


End file.
